Page 31 - Mark Chews Forty Two Australian Wooden Sailing Boats Sept 17 2020

Perhaps with this selection I’m letting my heart rule my head. She’s the only Philip
Rhodes boat on the list. Rhodes is perhaps the most underrated designer of the
20th Century and he drew a sheer line like no other…and I’m including Stephens,
Alden and Herreshoff in that assessment!

MARGARET RINTOUL was built by Ted Haddock in Sydney for Austin Edwards, who
had chosen a design from Phillip Rhodes, an emerging American naval architect.
Rhodes had been chief designer at Cox and Stevens from 1934 and took over the
firm in 1947. He then gave the firm his own name and quickly became one of the
leading yacht designers in the USA in the 1950s and 60s. The builder Haddock is
less well known. He had a yard at Margaret St in Greenwich for a short period and
is also remembered as the builder of the Alan Payne designed light-weight ocean
racing sisterships NOCTURNE and SERENADE in the late 1940s.
She is an early example of a post war ocean racer built in Australia to the latest
international concepts, at a time when many local ocean racing boats were dated
to the 1930s. The custom built, up-to-the-minute design of MARGARET RINTOUL
in 1948 just three years after the event had started, illustrates how early the
development of a serious and competitive approach to all aspects of ocean racing
had begun, an approach that was dominating the event from the late 1950s.
MARGARET RINTOUL also represents another stage in a growing trend away from
local designers toward designs from the USA and Europe, that had its beginnings
in the 1930s.

The yawl rigged yacht won line honours in two successive Sydney to Hobart races
in the early 1950s and set a record for the race with its second victory. Line honours,
which was the first yacht to finish, has always captured the public's attention for
the Sydney to Hobart race, and the challenge of setting a new record has since
become a fascination and focus of media speculation each year in the lead up to
the event.

CYAA Magazine Issue 43 September 2020 Page 31